My Rwandan prince charming

His mind was so mind blowing I wanted to study him. We were so different. He’s this religious guy and I barely go to church (literally). He doesn’t drink and I’m Burundian (need I say more?). We had completely different opinions about almost everything: topics such as relationships, divorce, LGBT rights and religion, but yet we had so much in common. We both know what we want in life, are ambitious, strongly opinionated, family orientated, loving and caring, social and easy to get along with… and we also had music in common. We’d talk for hours about everything and nothing, fall asleep on the phone, and spend whole days talking to each other. We sometimes got bored together but it wasn’t the bad kind of boring. We laughed, and went through ups and downs together.

But we never got to the point where we announced each other as “boyfriend and girlfriend”, but it felt like we were damn near married. We often made jokes about our future together, how many kids we’d have; how I only wanted boys and he wanted girls, where we would live and how we would go to church every Sunday as a family (ego, jewe). He would tell me how he would make my 9 months of pregnancy so smooth, even if it meant bringing out Chance the rapper to perform during labor (he’s my favorite artist hehe). He would compliment not just my beautiful face but my mind too. I would tell him how I didn’t want to hang up the phone even when I really needed to shower. I made him laugh more than he made me laugh (I’m funnier and I’ll stick to that) and he would tell me stories.
I thought he was the most beautiful person I’ve ever met, even though he really wasn’t my type to begin with. In my eyes, in my heart and in my mind I had found my soulmate. I was settled for life. I had found the one. Our pasts had no significance anymore. We only cared about our future together.

To the big question now… What went wrong?

We fought often but would always make up, until one day we didn’t.
It’s wasn’t me, it was him! No for real, it was him! Lying has always been a deal breaker for me and that’s exactly what he started doing so we had to let him go.
I’ve never been hurt by a guy before because it was always easy to move on. I convinced myself that I was too good for them anyway, too busy to waste time on foolishness, or that I was too mature for them (by the way, I’m only 22). And it worked! But what I didn’t know was that I had never actually fallen for a guy before. Hinge rero umunyarwanda ashike bice bihinduka, smh!

It started with small lies and which I looked past. I never confronted him about them because in my head, he had to have had reasons why he lied about such small things. Eventually the small lies developed into bigger lies about even dumber things. We started speaking lesser, and when he had a problem with me, he’d go to my friends instead of coming to me (narumiwe nanje).
He started demanding stuff that he hadn’t demanded before, like that I should stop drinking alcohol (I was never a heavy drinker, muga muma vacances quand-même…). Suddenly he started calling me ”immature” and telling me we were not “muri même monde” anymore. All those picture perfect plans we once made were no longer picture perfect. Muga ivyo rero ntivyateba: he would come back as his old self, the man I had started falling so hard for (but thank God I never told him that).

The lies kept coming though, so at some point, I decided it wasn’t worth it anymore. I didn’t want it to get so deep that I couldn’t get out anymore. I decided to send him this long paragraph – I didn’t have the courage to call – about how this wasn’t working for me anymore, although I sometimes felt like he had already left me before I left him. I never got a response but it was cool with me because I never expected one. I was done with that situation, or at least that’s what I think.

It’s been over a month now. I miss him so much I wonder if he misses me too (pathetic, ndabizi). It seems like he’s not even as touched, makes me think it was never real for him or I really just wasn’t as tough. I was listening to a poem the other day and at the end it said:

“Right now I should be yelling fuck you and really meaning that shit, but instead I’m sitting here hoping this is something we can have fixed.”

Not really my case here but I can relate. It’s like I should, but instead I wish him well.

It was all just too good to be true.

—

“Chronicles of a Burundian Lover” articles are published anonymously on purpose, because, you know, Abarundi… 😉